Friday, January 1, 2016

Note: My mother started writing our family history around her 50th birthday in 1995. It was written in the form of a letter to me, my sister Carin and brother Dean. She presented it to us for Christmas in 1995. She mentioned a couple of coincidental dates in our family history. She was unable to write about perhaps the biggest of all, her dying on my birthday in 1998, although she was well aware it was approaching. She was really doped up on morphine at the end, and the last words I heard her say were "JJ" (her cat) and "Bob's birthday."

It was also strange that early on she mentions "ten or twenty years from now." I read it the day she gave it to me and then not again until a few days ago, twenty years to the day it was first presented to me.

I thoroughly enjoyed retyping this and I have to pay my mother a posthumous compliment. She wrote this on a typewriter and it was 16+ pages long, single spaced. The manuscript was virtually grammatically perfectly and quite well written. I found maybe five typos and made maybe five minute editorial corrections, so it is purely her voice. Now I long to hang out with her again. Love you Mom....

July
23, 1995

To My
Children:

If you
are reading this, it does not necessarily mean anything ominous, but rather
that I have managed to complete a project that my mind is insisting I
undertake. And while I am making this a
general epistle to all three of you, I am hoping to maintain the energy and
focus to write some personal, individual notes to each of you following this.

Perhaps
I’ve gotten nostalgic, or should I say even more nostalgic, approaching and
finally reaching this half century point in my life, but at the least my
thoughts and reflections have been
many. When I was growing up I was a
great questioner—I constantly asked grandma and grandpa all kinds of questions
about family history and background, and in response I received many answers
and a lot of cute little anecdotes here and there. And it occurs to me that while over the years
I have passed some of this information on to you, there is also much that I
have not—for no particular reason other than perhaps I wasn’t asked, or perhaps
because our lives were so busy and chaotic the right time and opportunity
didn’t occur.

Much of
the past that I carry around in my head may be of interest to no one other than
me. I am a creationist, and not an
evolutionist, but I do believe we are all the sum total of not only our own
experiences, but those of our parents and grandparents and so on. For it was the things that occurred in their
lives that affected how we were raised and the people we became. So in a sense, stories about your forebears
are stories about you. Maybe they will
interest you now—maybe ten or twenty years from now (I hope at least sometime). But in any case, if they simply stay in my
head it will obviously go no further, you will miss out on what I at least
consider to be an interesting story, and you would not be able to pass it along
to your children and grandchildren should they ever ask. So what I am going to attempt to do is write
out as much as I know about our family, past to present. Even now I’m not sure how I’m going to lay it
all out, but if you’ve gotten this far you’ll soon know. (I’ll put in whatever information I can about
your father’s side, but obviously my knowledge there is a lot less.)

I’ve
just decided to start where it’s easiest, which is my mother’s side, because I
can’t go back all that far as you’ll see.
Grandma was born sometime in 1909 and given the name of Bernice
Corrigan. On July 19, 1910, she was
taken to a hospital in Chicago with a bad case of measles. Her parents never returned to pick her up and
upon her recovery she was turned over to an orphanage. Because she was estimated to be about a year
old when she was dropped off, she was assigned a birthday of July 19th. Grandma told me this story many times and
always seemed quite controlled and emotionless when describing it. It wasn’t until her final years that she ever
let on to me the impact it had on her life.
As you may recall, toward the end of her life she was very insistent
that I find her parents or at least institute some kind of search. I had long been aware that the police had
attempted to do this back in 1910—the address given to the hospital was a
vacant lot and the names couldn’t be tracked down. I always tried to assure Grandma that since
she was clearly Irish, her biological parents had probably come to this country
as part of the wave of poor Irish immigrants at the beginning of this
century. They obviously had taken good
care of her for a year and they may have made a tremendous personal sacrifice leaving
her at the hospital—probably they couldn’t provide for her any longer and
wanted to leave her somewhere where she would be taken care of. Whatever the answer, for her sake I preferred
to think of the positives of her parents (and I still do).

As an
aside—I think it was toward the end of Grandma’s life that I really began to
understand how little parents and children know of one another other than the
specific parent/child relationship. I
feel and hope that in some ways we have managed to overcome some of those
barriers. I often think back now to what
my parents were doing when they were my age and how they may have been feeling.

Back to
Grandma. In fairly short order Grandma
was adopted by Alma and Ira Stiff of Monmouth, Illinois (a town that claimed
the distinction for many years, and may still, of being totally dry—no alcohol
whatsoever allowed), a couple who couldn’t have any children. (Alma was originally Alma Schroeder of
Appleton, Wisconsin.) Again in fairly
short order Alma dumped Ira and began seeing Fred Abbey. Grandma used to tell me that it was such a
scandal back then that Alma had divorced Ira (I never knew the circumstances)
that she couldn’t openly be seen with Fred.
She used to take Grandma and meet Fred in the local cemetery at night
where Grandma would have to sit quietly on a tombstone while they were
courting. Eventually, Alma married Fred
and Grandma became Dorothy Helen Abbey.

I would
love to tell you that my Grandma Abbey was a sweet old thing but that would not
be very accurate. She was actually a
pretty selfish, domineering, crabby old thing who succeeded in making Grandma
very unhappy whenever they had to have contact over the years. She moved to New York and lived with us for a
year or two when I was about 9. When she
decided to go back to where her friends were, Grandpa said that the only time
he would ever speak to the old witch again was if she said she was going to
move back, and then he would have a lot to say!
In fairness to her, there may have been a lot of things about her I
didn’t know that would have made her so miserable, but if there were it would
be news to me. When Grandma Abbey lived
with us I was about 9 or 10, which would have made my Mom about 45 or 46. Grandma Abbey wouldn’t let Mom wear shorts in
the summer time and raised all kinds of noise if she went outdoors without her
lipstick on, white gloves and a hat. I
remember them hanging clothes on the clothesline with white gloves on. And we girls weren’t exempt, although I think
I only had to wear white gloves and a hat to Church on Sunday. Somehow my folks got me out of wearing them
to school. Times sure have changed!

But
whatever her faults, Grandma Abbey did adopt Grandma and give her a home and in
some ways I suppose that was better than growing up in an orphanage. However, a few years after she was
adopted Alma and Fred had their own
child, Ruth, and Grandma quickly became a Cinderella type. Since they were good enough to provide her a
home, she had to do all the housework, cooking and cleaning. Ruth became the princess and received the new
clothes, dance lessons, etc., while Grandma got the hand-me-downs and the
opportunity to be grateful. Fred was a
reasonably successful businessman and Alma spent her days being a social
butterfly. She loved to play canasta and
her afternoons were spent at card parties and ladies socials (as they were
called back then).

When
your grandmother graduated high school she was able to obtain a teaching
certificate and moved to a nearby farm town where she taught in a one room
schoolhouse. She taught seven or eight
grades—a total of about 12 or 15 students as I recall. I have pictures of her with her class (as
well as adoption papers, etc.) but pictures and documents will be my next
project! Anyway, I remember her telling
me how she wasn’t paid much as a schoolteacher.
She got room and board with a local family but had to do housework in
return. It didn’t go all that well and
was an incentive for her to leave after a year.
I remember one problem she told me about was the couple she boarded with
used re-usable condoms (whatever that might mean!) and they rinsed them and put
them to dry on the corner posts of their beds.
Grandma had to sweep and dust the room and she just couldn’t bear the
embarrassment of looking at those condoms!
Can you imagine?

The
following year (1928) when she was 19, Grandma married her boyfriend, William
Baird, and moved to Chicago. She worked
a theatre ticket booth that just happened to be near where the St. Valentine’s
Day Massacre took place. (That was in
1929 when one of Chicago’s mobs machine-gunned down numerous members of a rival
gang and really started the Chicago gang wars.)
I always found it curious that Grandma and Baird were married quite a
while before they had children—Barbara was born January 14, 1936 and Bruce was
born November 28, 1937—but once they did it didn’t take a long time for the
marriage to start to fall apart. William
Baird was an ambitious insurance executive who eventually became president of
his company—perhaps Wasau or one of those home-based in Wisconsin. Sometime around 1940 he was transferred to
New York for a few years. Grandma and
the kids moved out and got settled in Jackson Heights in Queens and he thereafter
left her for his secretary. He
ultimately married her, and a few others over the years, and had a couple more
children. It was my understanding they
were never told they had a half brother and sister in Bruce and Barbara. For many years Barbara and Bruce blamed
Grandpa for their father leaving and it wasn’t until they were in their
twenties that they accepted the truth and started to get along with Grandpa.

When
Baird left her, Grandma got a housekeeper in to watch the children and take
care of the apartment, and she went to work for Western Union at the St. Regis
hotel in Manhattan. Her best friend
there was dating Grandpa’s best friend who was a doorman at the hotel. The two of them set Grandma and Grandpa up on
a blind date on St. Patrick’s Day 1942.
From what they told me they fell instantly in love and Grandpa took to sending
a lot of Western Union messages. To save
money he would write his messages using the first letter of each word. For instance they always started TTMBGITW—To
the most beautiful girl in the world—and then she would have to figure out the
rest. Also, it turned out that the bus
stop where Grandma waited for her bus to go home was right near Grandpa’s
apartment window. If he was out working
or whatever, he would leave big signs in the window with notes for her. Hard to realize how romantic they were, isn’t
it?

In 1942
(and up until the late 60s) in New York, the only grounds for divorce was
desertion (of 7 years) or adultery.
There was no such thing as irreconcilable differences or divorce by any
mutual agreement. Baird was living with
his girlfriend but he didn’t want to get a divorce until he transferred out of
New York because he was worried about what he would be ordered to pay and how
it would look to his career. Ultimately,
the only solution was for Grandpa to hire a private a detective to follow him
and get enough information for the courts to grant him a divorce, all of which
took some time and I’m sure an emotional toll.
Eventually Grandma got her divorce—I have the divorce decree and one of
the amazing stipulations in it was that Baird had to get Grandma’s permission
to remarry. Makes you wonder what they
were thinking about doesn’t it? Anyway,
Grandma and Grandpa eventually were able to get married on June 3, 1944. They went to Boston for a honeymoon and
quickly discovered the hotel they had booked was right next to the train
station!

I guess
I should put some closure on the story of Grandma’s family. Her father, Fred Abbey, died of a heart
attack in 1946, shortly after our family had taken a trip out there so they
could meet me. Alma passed away in 1957,
I believe at the age 75. Grandma’s
sister Ruth (Grandpa called her other things, like a whore for one) went on to
have two children and half a dozen husbands.
One of her husbands sexually molested her daughter but it evidently
didn’t bother her too much because she stayed with him. Grandma tried to keep in touch with her and
with her children but the more years went by the more impossible it
became. When Alma was dying, Grandma
went out to Chicago for a couple of weeks to stay near her at the hospital and
to put her affairs in order. She
contacted Ruth, who was out in California at the time, to let her know her
mother’s condition. Ruth asked to be
told when her mother died and sent a list of belongings she wanted as well as
any available cash. Your grandfather
went a little ballistic as I recall and when the estate was all settled that
was pretty much the end of any contact between them.

When I
was growing up I recall that Grandma was still keeping in touch with several
cousins in Wisconsin named Schroeder. My
Grandma Abbey was buried in Appleton and they helped with the
arrangements. Also, I corresponded for
quite a while with a cousin in Monmouth, Illinois, by the name of Karen
Abbey. I know they didn’t have much
money and Grandma would send them clothes and things whenever she could. But as the years passed most of that contact
stopped as often happens where there’s a lot of distance involved.

I think
I’m going to stop the story about Grandma here and pick it up again after I bring
Grandpa up to the point where they get married.

Because
he was not an orphan, I obviously know a lot more about Grandpa’s background
than I did Grandma’s. And for some reason I know more about his
father’s side of the family than I do about his mother’s. (Maybe before I’m done with this I’ll try to
draw out some kind of family tree so that you have a better idea of what people
I’m talking about!) Grandpa was born
Harley Wesley Murdick on November 22, 1900, in Holland, Michigan, to Everett
Church Murdick and Mamie Hall Murdick.
He was their second child, their first being your Uncle Walter who was
born in 1897.

At some
point in time Uncle Walter did some serious genealogical searching and
discovered that the Murdicks (Murdoch) had been in this country since before
the American Revolution. He told me he
stopped looking when he found the ancestor who had been hung for being a thief,
but I was never sure if he was serious or joking! Anyway, as far back as my information goes is
to the Civil War, when your great-great grandfather Church Murdick, was an aide
to General Phil Sheridan. He survived
the war and on his discharge was when the spelling of the family name changed
from Murdoch to Murdick. It was
misspelled on his discharge papers and he was told it would take several months
to fix the error; he opted to leave with a new spelling. As soon as Church got home to Michigan he got
married (I’m trying to remember her name) on November 4, 1865, exactly one
hundred years to the day before Carin was born.
Uncle Walter had a copy of his grandparents’ obituaries which he showed
me; he thought it was fascinating the coincidence in dates. Everett evidently had a brother, Burr
Murdick, but I have no idea what happened to him. There’s probably some cousins floating around
in Michigan somewhere.

Grandpa’s
mother, Mamie, was also from Michigan and her family name was Hall. (Murdoch was obviously of Scottish lineage
and the Halls were Dutch.) Possibly
because she died so young, and her family remained in Michigan, I don’t know
quite as much about them. Mamie had a
sister Stella, and at least one brother, Burt.
One of Grandpa’s favorite stories was about Mamie and Stella. Stell was evidently a pretty sour disposition
and not nearly as attractive as Mamie, who was quieter and of even
temperament—and also much more popular.
One day Mamie had a date to go to a picnic with Henry Johnson, and
Everett came by (who she had a crush on) and asked her to go with him. She did, leaving Stell to explain to Henry
why he had been stood up. Henry got so
upset he took Aunt Stell to the picnic and ended up proposing to her. Grandpa said it was the closest she was ever
going to get to a beau so she accepted.
Uncle Henry was a dear, sweet man who visited us several times when I
was young. He was a fireman by trade who
had fought the great Chicago theater fire.
Later he and Stell moved to California where she died sometime in the
thirties. They had one child, Donald
Johnson, who was a scientist who worked on the atomic bomb during WW II. He developed leukemia during the work and
died before the war was over.

Uncle
Henry was a pretty colorful character who deserves a few lines here. As I said, his wife died in the thirties and
his son in the forties. After a few
years he was pretty lonely and got hooked up with a lonely hearts club (he was
in his early eighties at the time and this was back in the early 1950s). Anyway, he met a woman, had a whirlwind
romance, and married her. She moved into
his house, stayed for six weeks, never unpacked, then moved out. Because it was California and they have
community property laws, when she filed for divorce she got half of all he had
which was a fairly tidy sum. He said he
should have figured something was up when she never unpacked her suitcases or
trunks. We laughed about the story at
the time, but I now realize how hurt and humiliated he must have been. Right after that he came out to visit us and
during his visit I became extremely ill with walking pneumonia. It was around the holidays, cold and snowy,
and he would walk to the fruit store every day to buy fresh melons and fruit
for me. He was convinced it was the only
way I would get better. He had money,
but while he stayed with us he managed to make a little more. Everyone in my family had this habit of
putting change or money down on the sideboard in the dining room. Everyday Uncle Henry would say “Oh, did I
leave that there” and pick up the change.
It didn’t take us long to learn.
He passed away a couple of years later.
I know he left money to Grandpa and Grandma in his will, but his
daughter-in-law contested that and many charitable bequests he had made (using
his ill—fated marriage as an example of his incompetency) and I never was sure
how it was resolved. My recollection is
that they agreed to some kind of settlement.
I know Grandpa really didn’t care but he figured Uncle Henry was as
sound as a dollar mentally and his wishes should have been respected.

Another
story from a hundred years ago that Grandpa and Uncle Walter used to like to
laugh about was about their Grandpa Hawkenberry (I think from their mother’s
side of the family). It seems Grandpa
Hawkenberry went out early one morning to go rabbit hunting and ended up
shooting the man he thought was fooling around with Grandma Hawkenberry! Fortunately, the man wasn’t killed and he
somehow convinced the authorities it was an accident—the guy was wearing
something white that looked like a rabbit’s tail.

Anyway,
back to the story. From all I know,
Everett and Mamie were happy enough.
Everett was an inventor who designed
all of the early carpet sweeper and vacuum improvements and
modifications for Bissell (I think it was Bissell or whichever manufacturer was
in Grand Rapids). Unfortunately he
signed a contract with the company which automatically gave them the rights to
anything he invented during the time he worked for them. He was paid excellent money, but not to the
potential he might have earned on his own.
Evidently, he was an inventor not a businessman. Grandpa said he designed the ball bearing
units which made the first carpet sweepers work among other things.

The
family lived in Grand Rapids until sometime around 1905-1907 when Everett was
transferred to Newark, New Jersey.
Obviously Newark back then was not what it is today and Grandpa described
a real nice neighborhood and house that they lived in. In 1908 Mamie had another baby, Helen, and
evidently never regained her health.
When Aunt Helen was nine months old Mamie died of heart failure. It was not only a tragic loss for all of
them, but a major turning point in their lives.
Grandpa blamed his father for his mother’s death and never really
forgave him. Sometimes he said she died
because she had another child and that was because Everett was adamant he had
to have a daughter so it was his fault. Sometimes
he said it was because of her hair, that Everett wanted so long, so it was
still his fault. You’ve seen the picture
of Mamie and Stell with their hair that trailed on the floor. Grandpa said it was too much of a strain on
her heart! But that didn’t change the
fact that he never wanted my hair cut either and it was past my waist until I
was an adult. Whatever destroyed his
relationship with his father, I know I always felt great sadness about it. Following his mother’s death, as far as
grandpa was concerned his father could do nothing right. I hope they’ve made peace now.

(I
often think of Grandpa’s mother. In a
mere two generations her life has almost been forgotten. Yet she was young and vibrant and had dreams
and hopes just like we do. Sometimes
when I’m washing my hair and bemoaning what a chore it is to wash and dry, I
think about my grandmother and her hair down to the floor and what she went
through to maintain that—no jumping in the shower, no conditioner, no hair
dryer, just patience. She was only a
couple years older than Bob when she passed away, but she was a real person
just like us. My mother felt strongly
(and who knows) that I was the reincarnation of Mamie and that I came back to
take care of Grandpa in the best way I could.
I have learned that anything is possible in life and one thing I would
note is that my three children are very, very much like her three children
were, in individual personalities that is.)

Grandpa’s
mother was buried in Newark in a small cemetery. When I was about 12 or 13 Grandpa took me to
visit the grave (this would have been almost 50 years after she died). We went to the office to check the location
and what we discovered only served to revive a lot of bad feelings in
Grandpa. His mother’s headstone simply
said “MOM” on it—no names or dates or anything.
At some point his father had sold the adjoining plot and whoever used it
(totally unrelated to us) had put up a headstone that said simply “DAD” on
it. Grandpa was outraged, and blamed his
father for selling the plot to begin with.
At first, he wanted to move the grave or change the stone, ,but I think
Grandma convinced him there wasn’t much that could be done about it.

Anyway,
after his wife died my grandfather, Everett, asked his parents, Church Murdick
and his wife, to move out from Michigan to help him with the children. Grandpa later said this was totally
unnecessary (since he didn’t much like
his grandmother and sure didn’t want her around all the time), but if you think
about the situation I don’t see there was much choice. Everett was alone with three children, aged
12, 9 and 9 months—what else could he do in the year 1909 but ask his parents
to come help. So his parents came and
they all lived in Newark another couple of years, then his job transferred to
Torrington, Connecticut. During this
time he started seeing a woman named Lottie, whom Grandpa seemed to adore. The problem was that when they moved to
Torrington, instead of marrying her and moving her with them, Grandpa Everett
just wrote her letters for a few years.
Grandpa said this just showed how selfish and rotten he was; Everett and
Lottie didn’t get married until 1915 or 1916 and by that time Grandpa was
getting in trouble so much and was home so little that he didn’t really benefit
from having her as a stepmother. But he
was always fond of her and remained so until she died.

My
impressions were that while growing up Grandpa and Uncle Walter weren’t
especially close, but that they were both very protective of their little
sister. Many years later, when Grandpa
finally calmed down and settled down, they were all very close and loving. Uncle Walter was the traditional one and just
the opposite of Grandpa. He was a good
student, very active in school activities, the school paper, etc. When he went to join up for World War I, he
got caught up in the swine flu epidemic that went around back then. He barely recovered and when he did recover
had severe lung damage. The doctors told
him he had to take an outdoor job. I
guess there wasn’t a lot available so that wasn’t an easy task. He wasn’t strong enough for construction work,
so he eventually became a mailman. He
married his high school sweetheart (Aunt Lulu) and eventually had two children,
Virginia and James. Grandpa always said
that Virginia was the most beautiful and sweetest little girl in the world,
until she was five. Then she contracted
scarlet fever and in 1930, before antibiotics, that was truly life
threatening. After she recovered, again
according to Grandpa, she was nasty and ugly.
Actually, not just according to Grandpa—most people who know her would
agree. Virginia is precisely twenty
years older than me. The last time I saw
her was at Uncle Walter’s funeral and she was living in Florida at that
time—still is I assume. She got married
when I was a month old and never had any children until about a year before I
did. I believe your cousin Michele is
either one or two years older than Bob.
Then her son Michael was born around the same time Carin was. By then she’d been married about twenty
years. It was weird, though, for as soon
as I’d filed for divorce from your father, she filed for divorce from her
husband, Elmer Norton. Elmer was a real
nice, kind of a quiet Archie Bunker kind of guy. Well, Virginia probably did him a favor but
he was just totally baffled at the time and for a long time to follow—so were
the kids for that matter. Elmer paid
pretty good child support and she got the house for alimony, but Uncle Walter
had to keep working to keep her in extras.
After he retired from the post office Uncle Walter got a job as a
bailiff in the Litchfield Courthouse and worked at that until he was 75 or
77—and Virginia still had her hand out.

My
cousin Jimmy was a really nice guy, a lot like Uncle Walter and very little
like his sister. He was married to
Lorraine Bertram in 1952 and she was just as nice as him. They had three children you may
remember—Kristine, Jay and Kerry. I
haven’t seen them in a while but as far as I know they still live in Harwinton,
or at least I’m sure Lorraine still does.
Jimmy was the editor of the Torrington newspaper and active in just
about everything. He was in his early
forties when he had a heart attack on the ski slopes in 1974. He lived for several more months, did
everything the doctors told him to, but he had another heart attack that was
fatal. I remember it was in July and you
kids had been staying at the beach for a few days with Grandma and
Grandpa. It was about six months after
Grandma’s first, but minor, stroke.
After getting the call about Jimmy’s death Grandma had a massive stroke
and Grandpa just kind of spaced out—the poor man didn’t know what to do. Aunt Barbara and I raced to the cottage, got
Grandma into an ambulance and headed to Middlesex, got you kinds and Grandpa
packed up and back to Durham. Then we
had to alter between Grandma at the hospital and Jimmy’s funeral. It was not a fun time.

Where
was I—back to Grandpa Everett Murdick.
He married Lottie and moved her in with his kids and parents, and that’s
kind of the way it stayed until his parents passed on—which really means it was
permanent. Everett evidently developed a
serious drinking problem as the years went on and ended up drinking most of
what he made and what he should have had.
As I said before, he made very good money, about four times what the
average annual middle income would be for the time. When he died he had nothing and left and if I
recall correctly Uncle Walter and Grandpa had to help out Lottie who was pretty
much left destitute (this was in the thirties before social security). The family was generally known for
longevity—Great grandfather Church Murdick lived to be almost 90; his wife
(I’ll remember her name at some point before I finish this) caught pneumonia
and died when she was 93—it was January, about 10 below zero, and she caught a
chill hanging out the laundry because it was Monday morning and everyone knows
on Monday morning you do the laundry!).
Everett probably would have lived just as long but he fell off a second
story porch and landed on his head when he was about 67. Grandpa said he was drunk at the time. Again, this was in the mid-1930s—Grandpa
wasn’t there so I don’t know if it’s true or if he just assumed it.

Back to
1915. Grandpa was not like Uncle Walter,
and Aunt Helen was still just a little girl (although she always remained
somewhat quiet and timid). Grandpa was
the hell raiser and bad boy and whatever else you can imagine (or maybe you
can’t imagine it!) In retrospect, what
he obviously was was angry but I’m not sure he ever really understood
that. He played hooky, ran crap games in
the school yard, went out drinking and raising hell at night and generally got
in whatever trouble he could. Uncle
Walter said he never really did anything bad, like stealing or hurting anyone
other than himself. But he snuck out
every night and did whatever he could to upset his father and thumb his nose at
those in charge. He left school by
mutual agreement when he was about 15 and went to work at various odd jobs—whatever
he could get at the time. After a couple
of years he could see he wasn’t getting anywhere and decided it was time to
start moving—a habit he continued for the next twenty years.

Grandpa
tried to enlist for World War I but he was too young at the time and by the
time he was old enough the war was over.
In the early 20s he moved to Springfield and started working there. He met a woman, Patricia Williams (?) and
decided to try and settle down. They
were married sometime around 1926 or 1927.
He told me later he never really loved her but it seemed like the thing
to do at the time. I think he was
fascinated by her because she was evidently a marvelous figure skater. He said she would go down to the pond every
morning at 5 a.m. to practice skating and people would come just to sit and
watch her. He also said that as
beautiful and graceful she was on ice, was as nasty and spiteful as she was at
home. He said as soon as they were
married she started throwing pots and pans and yelling about everything and
anything. Within a month of being married
he decided this woman should not bring children into the world and he adjusted
their sex life accordingly (whatever that means!). Then she decided they needed to talk to a
priest (she was Catholic) about their sex problems. He never could understand (even forty years
later a baffled look came across his face) why anyone would talk to a priest
about sex problems! After a year or so
of this Grandpa decided to take a trip to Michigan to visit his cousins and
other relatives out there. His
grandmother was still alive then and she wanted to go as did his sister
Helen. So he drove to Michigan and said
that Pat complained and fought and made everyone miserable the whole trip. When they got there she decided she wanted to
go on to California. Grandpa made
arrangements for his mother and sister to get back to Connecticut and he drove
Pat to California. When they got there
he stopped in Sacramento, gave her the car and told her to have a nice
life. He went and joined the merchant
marines and became a ship hand on a freighter.
He sailed out and never came back to the U.S. for three years. It was more than a year before his family
even got a letter and had any idea where he was or what had happened to him!

So
Grandpa set out to see the world and find a road to happiness. He didn’t find that but he certainly had some
interesting times. He worked his way
around the orient—I have the silk kimono and ivory chopsticks he brought back
from Hong Kong and there’s a whole album of photos he took—a lot in the Philippines
and some of the Pacific Islands in that area.
When he got to the Philippines he broke his leg and was in a hospital
there several weeks. By the time he got
out his ship had sailed and he was stuck there for a while. He didn’t talk a whole lot about those times
but I gathered it was a lot of wild times and partying like he’d always
done. He did talk about how when it was
really hot the ship would anchor and the guys would dive in and swim in the
Pacific while a couple of men kept watch out for sharks!

Grandpa
came back to the States after three years and discovered there had been a major
depression he hadn’t even known about.
He settled in San Diego and opened a restaurant called Felix’s Café (I
think he just kept the previous owner’s name).
He did okay and kind of liked it in a way but he said he finally gave it
up because it was 18 hours a day 7 days a week and he just didn’t want to live
his life that way. After a few years he
came back east, finally visited his family and re-established those ties, and
settled in New York. There’s like ten
years there that I don’t know too much about what he did, but I have a feeling
there was a lot of wild life still going on.
I know he worked in retail sales for a while in a couple of department
stores in the city before he bought the medallion for his taxi cab. He got a mid-town apartment with a guy he’d
been good friends with in Torrington years before, Bill McNeil. They were roommates for several years up
until the time Grandma and Grandpa got married.
(Whenever I start worrying too much about Bob I remember Grandpa’s
lifestyle—I’m not sure if it helps but the parallels are obvious. Maybe more things than we realize are
hereditary.)

Grandma
and Grandpa met on a blind date on March 17, 1942 (forty eight years to the day
before their great grandson Patrick would be born!). As I said before, they evidently fell in love
at first sight. Because of divorce
problems they weren’t able to get married until June 3, 1944. (It not only took a while for Grandma’s
divorce, but Grandpa had to start tracing in California to see if his first
wife, Pat, had divorced him. Remember he
had just walked away from the whole thing.)
It took Grandpa until age 44 to really settle down, but when he did it
was with a bang. In little more than a
year I was born and by 1950 there were six children in the house—quite an
adjustment from a lifelong bachelor used to wandering the world.

We
lived in Jackson Heights in an apartment complex called Hayes Court. It was pretty nice because it was like six
buildings built around a nice courtyard.
There was space to play and all the neighbors were friendly and
sociable, which was unusual for New York even back then. We lived on the third floor of a five story
walk-up (no elevator) and Grandma’s best friend, Dolly Ross, and her family
lived on the fifth floor. Many years
later Uncle Bruce and Aunt Ruby moved into Dolly Ross’ apartment and there were
still many of the same tenants there from years before. When I was small there were several children
around my age to play with. One friend
of my mother’s was pregnant at the same time she was and had a little boy
shortly after I was born (her only child).
His name was Robby Craft and we played together almost every day until I
was five and we moved. After that we
only saw each other in church and at youth group meetings. When we were seventeen Robby committed
suicide and I think it was my first really overwhelming blow from reality.

Anyway,
we lived in the apartment at Hayes Court until 1950 when we moved to a single
family home. I have very vague
recollections of life there, but like most childhood memories they’re of
traumatic events. When I was a year and
a half old I was playing with Uncle Bruce on Grandma and Grandpa’s bed (a big
high old fashioned one) and I fell off and hit a radiator and broke my
collarbone. Grandpa said even after the
sling came off I wouldn’t use the arm for months and walked around with my arm
safely stuck my side! (obviously before physical therapy). I do remember Grandpa picking me up off the
floor and being in the doctor’s office.
Uncle Bruce later redeemed himself by saving me from a hi-riser. Because it was a two-bedroom apartment, after
I grew out of a crib they put me in a hi-riser (one bed is stored under the
other; you pull it out and lock it with a metal bar) next to Aunt Barbara. Evidently one night it wasn’t locked
correctly and Uncle Bruce woke up in the middle of the night to see my bed
going under Aunt Barbara’s and he grabbed me out of it. Grandma was always convinced I would have
died if he hadn’t saved me, but I tend to kind of doubt that!

I
remember a lot of parties at Hayes Court.
Grandma and Grandpa always entertained a lot, up until the time when
they retired and moved to Connecticut.
They had a close circle of friends who they saw every Saturday night—either
they went to one another’s houses or out to a nightclub. Usually, they’d play penny poker or parlor
games like charades. Then once a month
one of the crowd would have a Saturday night dinner party with a poker game
afterward. During the spring and fall
the men would play golf Saturday during the day (sometimes the women too) and
then meet their wives at whoever’s house they were going to that night. There were several other couples who joined
in once a month or so, but every Saturday night without fail was Grandma and
Grandpa, Frank and Nettie Colosanti, and Al and Bertha Coderre. We kids grew up with the Saturday night thing
and it kind of surprised me when I learned that my friends’ parents didn’t have
the same kind of routine. Oddly enough,
of all the couples they were friends with, Grandma and Grandpa were the only
ones with children. Every December,
about two weeks before Christmas, there was always a huge Christmas party at
our house instead of the usual Saturday night party. Grandma would do the party because she had
all the kids. All of their friends would
come as well as Santa Claus to pass out gifts.
In the summertime, these friends would all come up to the cottage every
4th of July weekend and Labor Day weekend. Sometimes there were twenty or thirty people
sleeping in the cottage, but it always worked out and everyone always had a
good time.

When I
was five years old we moved to our new house which was about seven blocks from
the apartment at Hayes Court. While it
didn’t mean a change of schools for Barbara and Bruce, it did mean a change of
friends for me. There was literally no
one my age in the new neighborhood—a few babies, and several about two years
older than me and in school full time, but no one my age for me to play
with. It was this fact that eventually
led to the coming of foster children. I
know that I drove them crazy saying how I wanted a baby brother. But by this time Grandma was in her early
forties and the doctor had told her she couldn’t have any more children. I think they finally ended up discussing
adoption (I’m sure because of Grandma’s feelings about her own background) but
Grandpa refused because there was no return policy! That may sound horrible but actually it makes
sense. He was very concerned about his
age (at that point he was 50) and his ability to live long enough to raise the
children he was responsible for. He was
also concerned about taking a child blindly without knowing any more about its
background than the authorities cared to share with you. Grandpa felt very strongly about genetics
long before they were even studying it.
He was certain that if a person was a drug addict, or a thief, or a
prostitute etc., they would pass at least a tendency in that direction along to
their children (and he has obviously since proven to be correct). He was adamant about not taking in a child
who had been born in New York, and also if they had a child who was simply more
than they could handle he wanted to be able to say no. So they went into foster care. I think they got something like $50 a month
for each child and the State provided medical care. Of course that meant going to State clinics
wherever one happened to be located and sitting and waiting for hours to be
seen. For instance, when Pat came to
live with us she was severely cross-eyed.
She had to have four or five operations to fix her eyes. I remember riding with Grandma on the subway
from Queens into downtown Manhattan to the clinic at Bellevue. And there we would sit, and sit, and sit,
until the eye doctor was ready to examine her.
Grandma had the patience of two saints, but it took me many years to
appreciate it.

Back to
foster care. Another down side to it was
that we got regular—once or twice a month—visits from social workers who decided
if they liked how Grandma was running the household. This wasn’t all that bad until you got a nasty
social worker, and I remember we had a few.
One of the workers assigned to our house didn’t like the idea of Grandpa
taking us all to the cottage for the whole summer and thought it would be
better if we stayed in New York City for the summer like other foster kids had
to. Grandpa had to take her to Court to
get permission for that year. There was
one real nice woman that used to come to the house—her name was Betty
Wong. Unfortunately, she was murdered on
the Orient Express (no kidding!) and Grandma was really upset about it. A movie was made about it once upon a time.

Anyway, Grandpa was adamant that he didn’t want any children
who were born in New York. It turned out
that all they had available were three brothers who had been born and raised in
Massachusetts (I have no idea how they ended up in Brooklyn Home for Children). They didn’t want to split them up so they
asked my folks if they would please try taking all three. So in the fall of 1951 Dennis, Kenneth and
Philip came to live with us. I don’t
much remember how Barbara and Bruce felt about it—but they were teenagers by
then and weren’t having much to do with the family.

*********************

December
13, 1995

My goal
had been to finish this before Christmas, and believe it or not I have spent
most of my spare (smile!) time working on it.
However, it has become obvious that I’m ending up writing a book and not
just a few pages. Since I know how much
more I want to put down for you, I can see that I’m probably not even half
done. I sat and pondered this and whether
or not if I drove myself crazy I could possibly finish it in time for
Christmas. The answer was no, I could
not, and in any case it wouldn’t be the wise way to do it. So I decided to give each of you what I had
managed to write thus far and now my goal will be to finish it by spring (or
maybe next Christmas with pictures). But
I thought you might be interested in reading it to this point. I also thought that if in reading you had
questions or comments, they might be helpful to me as I continue to work on
this. It’s kind of fun for me, I enjoy
the memories, and I hope it’s making some sense and is of some interest to you.

Since I
can’t possibly finish it in time for Christmas, I wanted to take the rest of
the time I have to just include a couple of things you should know about me—because
part of me is part of you and so it goes on and on. A thought has stayed in my mind for a couple
of years now that I wanted to explain, and to give you all food for thought in
case you need it. Dean asked me a while
back if I was pro abortion and seemed astonished when I said absolutely
not. This is an important issue to me
for two reasons: (1) I don’t believe I
have the right to destroy anything I can’t give back, and I know without God
there is absolutely nothing I am capable of making or giving. We all go through a certain amount of suffering
and inconvenience in life and if an unplanned or undesired pregnancy is part of
that suffering, that’s life. Not one of
us has the right to judge the value of or the quality of the life of
another. Every life is valuable and
serves a purpose—it makes no difference if we don’t see the purpose, just put
it on a list of a million and one things in life we will never understand. (2) After Bob and Carin were born, it was
obvious that my marriage was eventually doomed, but I became pregnant
again. Grandma talked about how
difficult it was going to be for me to raise two children, much less three, and
the wisest thing to do would be to get an abortion. I never thought about it for a moment, and I
kept telling her she was talking about my child, as much my child as Bobby and
Carin. Grandma looked at it differently
and it resulted in several arguments.
After Dean was born, and nearly died in the process, I held on to him
all the time and would regularly tell Grandma—“Can you imagine life without
Dean?” Maybe I was a little hard on her,
but I think the reality of it eventually changed her mind. Now it’s almost thirty years later, but whenever
I hear people talk about abortion, the first thing I think is “Can you imagine
life without Dean?” No I cannot.

A few
months ago in conversation Bob mentioned that we were all descended from apes,
indicating that he is an evolutionist. I
won’t get into long arguments asking that he reconsider. Again I would make two points: (1) If we are evolved from apes, where are
all the interim evolutionary products?
There are still apes; there are people—if we are evolving one from the
other there should be a multitude of interim evolutionary stages in existence—where
are they? (2) I know you believe in God,
so please believe in his Word and remember that He doesn’t stutter. He tells us He created us and He tells us
how. Don’t let Satan and his world put lies
in your mind and your thinking. Keep
your eye and ear on the Lord and it will be all you need.

When my children were born, the
three of you, I was young, inexperienced, over-confident, and for sure I made a
lot of mistakes. But I had one main goal
for the three of you and I delight in your constant demonstration to me that I
achieved that goal. Because the thing I
felt that was most important in raising you was to have you understand that you
were all capable of doing and achieving anything you set out to do, and that
you should march to the beat of your own drummer, be your own person, live the
life you chose to live and not what society would like to determine for
you. And you all do that every day.

You are
good people and you have come from good people.
If there is any case for evolution, it is in that, and God told us the
simple truth many years ago: good begets
good, evil begets evil. You are good
people and I am proud of you all. I will
continue to try and write this story and hope one day it will be as important
to you all as it is to me.